Missing Dates
by stealthofdays
Summary: 148 days pass. Spike is given another chance to save Buffy.
1. Chapter 1

_It is the poems we have lost, the ills_

 _From missing dates at which the heart expires._

 _Missing Dates_ , William Empson

As you may have realized, Giles, I am only going along with this for Buffy's sake. Your burblings about a higher calling notwithstanding, I have less than zero interest in adding to the sum of human knowledge, or being a busy little Watcher-helper bee, or anything ridiculous like that. But I do see your point that Buffy may have come out of all this changed and you ought to know everything that happened. Fine. But one hint of a smirk, Watcher – one hint! – and I am out of here.

Turns out, all the while I was patrolling with them and being all helpful-like, they were coming to the conclusion that Buffy was trapped in a hell dimension and thinking of ways to get her out. Grief must have made me stupid; I can't think of any other reason I didn't notice the conspiratorial sneaking around that was apparently taking place right in front of my nose.

And if you are now thinking that eventually reason was seen and brakes were applied, well, that only happened because Dawn found out about their little scheme and demanded to know what on earth made them think Buffy's in hell. Now, when I can bring myself to be fair to them (which is never), I can see that they assumed she just went into Glory's dimension. Hence, hell. But, as Dawn asked, would it have killed them to make sure?

Thus confronted, they did a locator spell, the kind that Willow says is like trying to hit a puppy by flinging bees at it. Roped me in as well. I guess they figured Dawn would tell me anyway.

There are no maps of what we needed the spell to check, so Willow did what she called a notional representation of the dimensional infinity, which she sketched out and then sort of pulled off the page with her fingers. It hung in the air, and the closest I can get to describing it is it seemed to be ceaselessly moving and dead still at the same time. I felt like my eyeballs were about to turn inside out every time I looked at it.

"Well, here go our bees," Willow said. She picked up a spray bottle that said Windex but I guessed wasn't, and circled around the notional representation, misting it evenly. It took her longer to get around it than it should've, and by the time she'd circled back, she was sweating and shaking as she lowered herself back to the ground and leaned on Tara's shoulder. Tara put an arm around her and started the chanting part. It was in a language I don't understand, chanting always makes me sleepy, and in general I try not to know any more about magic than I can help. You'll have to ask the witches about it yourself, if you want details.

The chanty bits were taking a while, and my mind drifted, and I thought again about how the worst part was how close I'd been to saving them. Or no, the worst part was having to look at the bot every day. The worst parts were the moments of wondering why the hell I even care. I thought that the worst part was that Buffy didn't get to do all the things she wanted, that she died tired and sad; or maybe that Buffy actually did do exactly what she wanted when she went leaping off that tower. All of the parts were the worst parts.

Finally the chanting stopped and something went "ping." The notional representation lit up in a shower of tiny sparks. Willow straightened up and leaned forward, as if listening to something.

"She's lost," Willow said. "Buffy's lost." Her eyes were round and dark, unreached by the guttering light of the candle. "She's… scattered, all across the universe. Her blood is calling to us. From the earth. Deep calling to deep…" Her voice trailed off into panicked gulping.

"Willow? Willow, are you okay?" Xander began to get up.

"I'm fine," she said, still sounding a bit hoarse, but more like herself now. "I… What did I…?"

"Buffy's lost, you said," Anya said. "Scattered across the universe. Across dimensions, I suppose you meant."

"So would that work?" Tara asked. "What we were going to do?"

"I don't know," Willow said. "We thought she was in a hell dimension, which, sure, dicey, but, you know, doable. Though Osiris is actually pretty powerful. We could probably get him to put her together. Maybe we should just go ahead the way we planned."

"I don't know," Anya put in. "Straightforward return from the dead is one thing. Even if he can really gather her from all those dimensions, he will want a higher price for this, and we don't know what that could be."

At this, Willow frowned and twisted her lips. I expect the original price wasn't so easily paid either, whatever it was.

"Besides," Tara spoke up again, "I don't know if he even could. I mean, he's the lord of the dead, so he could give her life and take away death, but this is just something else altogether. It's almost like having to make her all over again."

"So, what, now we leave her like that?" Xander said. "What does it even mean, she's scattered. Does she… she…?"

"We don't know, Xander," said Tara. "We just don't know. Of course we don't want to leave her. It's just, calling on Osiris, like we'd meant to, it might not even help. It could make things worse. And Anya's right – we don't know what he will demand in return."

Xander opened his mouth to retort – yes, that was my first impulse as well, to blurt out that there is nothing we wouldn't give – and then, surprisingly, a glimmer of sense set in and he settled back down. Me? Well, my first thought was that I'd cheerfully let the world burn to get Buffy back. My second was that Buffy wouldn't much like getting back to a burnt out world. And call it a gut feeling, but the sacrifice we'd need... Seems to me like it would need to be as dark as she is light. Things have a way of wanting to balance out.

"There may be another way," Anya said slowly. "It's not something that's really been done a lot, because, first of all, it's really difficult…"

"Hey, me, I eat difficult for breakfast!" Willow piped up. "Why didn't you tell me about this other way in the first place?"

Anya gritted her teeth. "Because, as I was about to say before you so rudely interrupted me, it wouldn't be you doing it."

"What do you mean, not me?"

"I mean, not. You. There is a way to open the paths of the dead."

"But I thought it wasn't Buffy's being dead that's the problem." Xander, this time.

"Will you let me talk? I'm not talking about where people go when they die. What I mean is, you have to be dead to find the paths. The way it works is, you have to walk them all the way, and if you get to the end, you get to ask the Powers for what you need. Anything you need."

"This really works?"

Anya shrugged. "I don't know anyone who actually did it, if that's what you're asking. Then again, it's not like I hung out with a lot of dead people. After they died, I mean. Opening the paths isn't hard – it's walking them that's supposed to be almost impossible. What I heard is, the paths are only there because the Powers have to put in loopholes, so there is technically a way to get around everything, but really it's so difficult it might as well not exist."

"You know how to open them? Why haven't I come across this before?" Willow sounded put out. Because there are more things in heaven and on earth, I thought but didn't say. I was beginning to see where this was going.

"It's not widely known. In fact, many parties have gone to considerable lengths to ensure it isn't, at least according to the demon who told me this. It's all very hush-hush. I don't know that Spike is up to it, in any case," she said critically. "He's kind of been off lately."

"Spike?" said several incredulous voices.

"Well, duh. Unless you see any other dead people hanging around waiting to volunteer for this extremely dangerous and probably futile mission."

"Angel…"

"Is in Tibet," Willow sighed. "He is processing his grief."

Processing fiddlesticks. I still can't bear to hear about him, useless fucking _twit_.

"Wait. So you mean, Spike needs to do this? It's dangerous, though, right?" Christ. We'd all forgotten Dawn was there.

"Didn't I already say that, like a million times?" Anya said.

"It's for Buffy, Dawnie. Spike wouldn't mind doing this, not if it's for Buffy."

Mind? I just couldn't believe I could have a second chance at this. At not fucking things up for Buffy.

"What are we waiting for?" I said. "You said it's easy – go on then, let's get with the opening."

We all looked at Anya.

"It's just your regular portal-opening, doesn't even need that much power. You do the herbs and the candles and the circle, only with the lyke-wake song instead of the usual words. You all know it, right?"

They stared back at her (I was a little surprised at Tara).

"Fire and fleet and candle light," I said. "And I'm to be the corpse, I suppose. Very funny."

"How on earth would _you_ know about this, Spike? Have you been messing around with dark magic on the sly?" said Xander. I don't know why he should assume everyone else is as illiterate as him. I decided not to waste time by antagonizing him.

"It's an old folk song. Was sort of a craze, back in the day, collecting them, writing up the music. Must've heard it somewhere."

"Right, so we can do the portal, and Spike goes through, and…?"

"I told you, I don't know," Anya said.

"But it's a chance," Xander said. "A chance we could really get Buffy back."

And, unlike trying to bargain with Osiris, the only one at risk here would be yours truly. Worst case, I don't make it back and everything else stays in statu quo. A prospect traumatizing to absolutely no one. Dawn… yeah, she'd miss me, sure. But she's still a kid and she's got all the others there for her. And I don't know that it would have done her much good, me hanging about when we'd all know I had a chance of going after Buffy and decided not to take it.


	2. Chapter 2

To no one's surprise, opening a portal was not quite as straightforward as Anya'd made it sound. First there was a lot of jaw about the shopping list, none of which I understood. Then they argued about where to open it. Willow wanted to do it right here in the Magic Box, which Anya didn't cotton to on account of she felt it would be messy and generally disruptive to commerce. Anya felt it would be only fair that Buffy's house be the scene of any Buffy-related destruction. Xander disagreed, loudly and at length. The ensuing conversation reflected well on none of the parties, and was only brought to a halt by Tara's suggestion that they do it in my crypt. They'd got my back up so much by then that I almost refused, instinctive-like, and remembered just in time that this was about Buffy.

Once that was settled, they started in on whether it was enough to say the verses, or should they be written down, on parchment, or on something of Buffy's, or… I couldn't listen to any more of this.

"Carve it on your arses for all I care," I told them. "I'll see you at mine when you're done faffing around."

I didn't wait for Willow to tell me how _important_ it was to get every detail right. I knew it was sodding important, alright? Not like I was going to contribute anything of value to the discussion, so thought I'd let off some steam, rip off a few heads, before heading home and waiting for them to come and send me off.

On second thought, I decided to just go home. I had no idea what I was going to have to do, and it was probably better to be rested. Also, maybe straighten up a bit. Not that I cared what your merry little crew thought of me, but if I did get Buffy back through the portal, I preferred if the first thing she saw was not a pile of my dirty laundry. Or her, you know, things. From the Bot, which was a _mistake_ , alright, and a long time ago, and please feel entirely free not to say anything about this at all, ever.

It seemed like hours before they showed up. I had time to tidy up, have some blood, pace around for a bit, dust the sarcophagi, pace around some more. I even took a shower and brushed both sets of teeth, for no actual reason. Fairly sure that whatever trials I'd have to endure would not concern my hygiene but, hey, better than thinking.

I thought anyway. Best case, all I'd have to do was battle some beastie, and that would do the trick. Not nearly fool enough, to seriously hope for it. Whatever this magic was, it was old and involved the Powers themselves. Been around long enough (and done some reading on the side) to know that's not how they work. I had an uneasy feeling that things I'm actually good at – e.g. punch-ups – would be carefully avoided on this tour of the paths of the dead.

Finally, they all appeared, even Dawn, who I first thought was there because she'd resisted any attempts to send her home.

Willow made me push all the furniture against the walls and proceeded to chalk a circle in the middle of the floor, while Tara lit one of my candles, and the rest of them squished onto the sofa.

"Your turn now, Dawnie," Willow said, dusting her chalky hands off all over her jeans. Dawn nodded and walked over to the duffel bag of witchy implements Tara had plonked down on my chair.

"Hey, Nibblet, didn't know you were going in for that sort of thing now," I said. I was a bit annoyed she hadn't said anything to me.

"I'm not," she said, extracting a small knife from the bag. "I just need to be the one to do this." And she slashed her knife across the fleshy part of her palm, under the thumb. I was half out of my seat when Xander clamped his hand around my shoulder. "Calm down," he said. "It's going to be just a few drops, okay? That's the closest thing to Buffy's actual blood we have, so just settle the fuck down and let's do this."

Dawn began pacing around the outline of the circle, squeezing droplets of blood to fall on the chalk.

"But why do we need Buffy's blood at all?" I asked weakly. Even as I spoke, I knew it was a very stupid question. What else was there?

"Well, you saw those sparkly dots, right?" Tara turned around from where she was mashing something in a small mortar. "On Willow's floating dimensional thingy?"

"Right, that's what showed us Buffy being… scattered, you said?" I still didn't know what exactly that meant, except clearly making everything more difficult.

"It's her blood, Spike. That was pretty much what we had to key the locator spell to."

Oh. So that had to have been Dawn's blood in the Windex bottle, then. Which I had mysteriously failed to smell, so I'd guess, mixed with something fairly powerful in its own right. I sneaked a glance over to where she was still treading around the circle, leaving a tiny trail of blood droplets as she went. Was she looking pale? Hell if anyone could tell, in the middle of the sodding night in a crypt. I decided to give it a rest, anyway. It wasn't actually dangerous, and sometimes it's easier when you can suffer a bit, if you feel like it's all your fault. Even when they say it isn't.

Dawn finished the circle and came to stand in front of me, still holding the knife.

"Give me your hand," she said. Made sense, since I'd be the one going. I held out my right hand, and she drew the knife across it and mashed her wounded palm to mine, her fingers wrapping around mine and squeezing hard.

"This should do, Dawnie," Willow said. Dawn slowly let go of me and sat down next to Xander, who had a roll of gauze ready.

"Alright, Spike. Go into the circle – careful, don't step on the line – and wait. We will start with the words in a minute. Ooh, the candle. That needs to be out, can someone get that? Thanks, Anya. Sweetie, are the herbs done?"

"Here," said Tara, materializing out of the murk with a copper bowl in her hand. Now that I noticed it, the circle on the floor was glowing, very faintly, and everything else was darker than usual. I couldn't even see the outlines of the windows under the roof.

Willow took the bowl and set it down inside the circle. She flicked her hand at it and it went up in pale wavery flame, spreading a warm, grassy, flowery smell. " _Don't_ step in that, Spike," she said.

"Alright, everyone," Willow went on. "First off, places. Spike, stay right where you are and don't move. No, don't talk either. Okay, guys, like we discussed, I'll be on North and Tara will be West. Xander, come here stand on East, and Anya take South. Right across from me, like that. Xander, a little to the right. No, I meant my right, not your right. Just scooch over a little. Okay. Dawn, just stay on the couch and don't move. Whatever happens, just don't. I'll do the words. Spike, I'm sorry, but I don't know exactly what's supposed to happen. Anya wasn't real specific." Anya rolled her eyes and shrugged. "I guess you'll just have to use your judgment." And didn't that prospect just fill all of us with hope.

"I just hope this is the proper version," Willow felt necessary to add as she unfolded the paper she'd dug out of her pocket. "Remember, the rest of you come in at the refrain, in the beginning and between the verses. Spike, do not say anything. Do. Not. Speak." I glared at her.

Then they all started off, all at sixes and sevens. This thing has a tune, by the way, but you wouldn't know it from the chorus of mumbles that ensued.

"This aye night, this aye night,

Every night and all

Fire and fleet and candlelight

And Christ receive thy soul."

My head began to swim – I don't know if it was nerves, or autosuggestion, or the smell from the fire. Thoughts poured into my head, none of them reassuring. Next, Willow piped up, hurrying through her verses:

"When thou from hence away art past

every night and all

to Whinny-muir thou comes't at last

and Christ receive thy soul."

Specifically, I began to have grave misgivings about the souls and Christ bit; hadn't anyone noticed how that didn't seem at all vampire-friendly? Possibly, I thought, we'd all been a bit hasty in deciding that I was the best person… person-type… entity? to be messing around with all this…

As Willow spoke, her voice faded into the distance, and the darkness closed in. I could no longer see any of their faces. I heard their voices start up the refrain again, tinny and far, soon fizzing out into static. I took a deep breath. The air smelled like outside: living wood, damp earth, rainclouds, all with a faint overlay of the grassy-floral fire smell. I was completely and utterly alone.


	3. Chapter 3

The darkness pressed in around me, smelling of living wood and very faintly of that strange flowery fire. I couldn't see at all. And it felt a million miles away from anything. I've been to some out-of-the-way places in my time, but compared to this, the plains of Antarctica are downright homely and bustling. "That far country from whose bourne to traveler returns," I said out loud and immediately wished I hadn't. There was no echo, no sense of my voice carrying at all, but the darkness suddenly felt sharper, almost hostile. I put out a hand to feel in front of me and almost impaled it on something extremely sharp (Is 'impale' the word I want here? Can you impale just a hand, or is that only for an entire person?) When I was done cursing and licking the blood off my hand, I tried again, slower. The sharp things were everywhere, seemingly, and they were the things smelling of living wood. So, thorns. Thorns the size of stakes – at least, the size stakes Buffy always used to carry. I allowed myself a moment of sentimentality, then went on trying to suss out where I could get through the thorns. Nowhere, it seemed. The sodding things were all around me, and above me as well. I knelt down, very carefully trying not to put an eye out, and felt about on the ground. And here's another funny thing: the earth was damp and loose, good fertile soil that probably just needed a drop of sunlight to grow things other than mutant stakes. But a foot in front of me, my hand bumped into spiny cold bark again, that went in a circle all around me. I dug my hands into the ground, just to get that earth smell again. It welled up around me, strong and almost, almost living. I sniffed it again, and there was something else. Buffy. Buffy's _blood_. I lifted my head and tried again to get a sense of my surroundings, other-than-thorns-wise. Just darkness and wood. I put a handful of earth up to my nose and the smell smote me again, full in the face. There was no way forward, or backwards, or up. There was only this patch of earth, and the trail of Buffy's blood. Not very moor-like, but far be it from me to criticize the arrangements. I vamped out and began to dig. It took everything I had to put my head in when the hole got deep enough. I hate things covering my face and cramped spaces. But I was following the scent, and that meant digging straight down and also having my face pressed into the earth while I scrabbled at it with my hands. I kept panicking and forgetting about breathing and getting wet clumps of earth up my nose and in my mouth. I don't know if I was there for days or hours or years. It became increasingly difficult not to think about the weight of the earth above me, but the farther I went, the heavier it got.

At first it was pretty much what you'd expect if you had to tunnel down for a while using just your bare hands. Your softer bits get shredded and the pressure is unbearable but you bear it anyway. After a while, it got worse.I could no longer tell where I ended and the earth began. The thought took hold that I was finally and terminally dead, and that all I was feeling was the interminable moment of my dissolution into dust. Moving seemed both pointless and impossible; it was time to stop, sink quietly into the ground, become as nothing.

My mouth filled with blood.

The pain slammed back in half a second later. I could think again, sort of; at least, there was a me to do the thinking. At the moment, everything in my head was going haywire. All around me, the earth smelled of blood. _Buffy's_ blood.

As you know, Giles, there was a time in my life when that would've just mad me very hungry. Now, I had a vague feeling that it should not move me either way, but it did. I felt hungry, and also nauseous, and also all the misery I'd been tamping down on all these months recrudesced in a great gout of agony. If you ask me, was I keeping my mind on the task, no, I sodding was not.

Eventually, I did calm down enough to keep following the trail of blood. I even remembered the part where it was Buffy's blood that was scattered all over and tried to keep some in my mouth, to store like. No, I don't know what good I thought that would do. It just felt right.

Onward and downward. It was quiet there too. Just the sloshing, squelching sounds of me moving through wet clay. You know how when you listen to some monotonous noise long enough, you begin hearing patterns, even words? Maybe it was the smell of the blood, but at some point the sloshing began to sound like more of a thwacking, nasty butcher-shop noise, punctuated by a wet chewing, smacking sort of thing. What I really minded was how confused it made me feel. The things I liked, and not being sure if I still did, and knowing I oughtn't, and what that meant for me trying to get Buffy back.

Worse, I began hearing a rhythm, and once that happens, you really can't make yourself stop listening for it. The words came a bit later.

"Oh, when I was in love with you,

Then I was clean and brave,

And miles around the wonder grew

How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passed by,

And nothing will remain,

And miles around they'll say that I

Am quite myself again."

Over and over again, sounding eerily like Darla, of all people. Same self-satisfaction, same sneering tone. I even opened my mouth to answer and was promptly rewarded with a shovel's worth of clay down my gullet. Had to gather up more blood.

If I stopped caring, if I got the chip out, would I be quite myself again? Would I ever miss not being it? Last time she came back, Drusilla thought all I needed was to ignore the chip – didn't believe in it, she said. Maybe the problem was that, by that time, I'd started believing in it, a little.

Buffy had said the same thing. A serial killer in prison, and I hadn't known why that was a bad thing. After all, prison is very effective in stopping people from killing, except when there's gangs, with those shivs they make out of paper towels and things, awfully inventive I heard they are.

I was beginning to understand what Buffy had meant that day. It wasn't really about the killing or the not killing. She had no way of knowing of who the hell I was, who would be standing there when I was quite myself again. And it's all very well for me to know that there is no passing fancy here, but that is not the question either. If all I'm doing is wearing a mask, it's no good me supergluing it to my face so it stays on forever. I'm actually fairly sure most people would view that as making everything a lot worse.

Now you would say that there was no question here at all, that all of you knew I had not, could not have changed. Lies. You would've staked me as soon as looked at me, if I hadn't looked just a teeny bit like a person to you. Buffy would have done the same. No, all of you, same as Drusilla, you suspected me of it. Came speechifying at me about higher purposes. That still really annoys me, although I'm no longer sure why.

But just because something with Darla's voice was parroting Housman over and over at me didn't mean I had to decide any of this then and there. This was about saving Buffy, not what she'd think of me afterwards. Whoever else I was, for now I could just be the one who does what it takes.

The muttering faded back into mud noises and I couldn't feel my hands at all, when I hit something solid, face-first. Wood or rock, I could not tell. I tried to follow the scent, but by then I guess I was bleeding fairly heavily myself, so it was confusing. I began scraping my way along the solid wall. I had no idea if I was going up or down. As I scooped the next soggy handful of clay, I suddenly found myself clutching a handful of empty air. The panic I'd managed to squash down all this time surged up so hard, I can just remember flailing and scrambling until most of me was flopped on top of the ground, sobbing and gulping, then passing out.

When I opened my eyes, I lay for a bit, staring into the nothing overhead, and taking deep even breaths. Hey, I don't need my lungs to work, but I still have a psychology. In a sense. Eventually, I hauled my legs out of the pit and sat up. My observational powers considerably enhanced by me no longer being buried in dirt, I noticed that not only did I not have any clothes on, to speak of, but apparently a quantity of flesh had sloughed off as well, especially on my hands, which were pretty much all bone and claw. Clay, on the other hand, was plastered all over me. Either the darkness had lifted a little or my eyes were getting used to it. I could now see the faint outlines of the same thorn bushes I'd felt earlier, all around me. The one thing that was different was the solid bulk at my back that I had used to claw my way out of the ground. I tried touching it, but couldn't feel anything – like I said, claw and bone. Bugger. I tried smelling and got a glob of snotty clay up my nose. As I had nothing to blow my nose with, I will spare you the details, but I eventually managed to excavate my nasal cavities sufficiently for them to be of actual use. Faint whiff of burning flowers, reek of blood-churned earth under my feet, and the smell of living forest from the wall-like thing near me. I couldn't see its edges on either side, though it appeared to curve a little. As far as I could tell, it went mostly up, and the thorns surrounding me came from branches growing out of it.

So, here I was, to all appearances exactly back where I started, only I'd had to dig forever and a day to get there. Big-ass tree, this time no way out but up. I thought again about the weight of the earth around me, and the feeling that I wasn't so much digging as the earth was sifting through me. This could not be worse, nothing could be worse. I was in pain, but pain would not kill me and it did not have to stop me. I found the nearest branch and started hauling myself upward, trying to avoid the thorns.


	4. Chapter 4

While I'd been sitting around trying to get myself together, the earth I was covered in had dried into a stiff exoskeleton, which made it harder to climb but easier not to get poked with thorns. Still, not what I'd call a piss and a doddle.

Nevertheless, I was making fairly good time (at least, it felt like it), until the thorns started coming closer together, almost as bad as they had been down on the ground. The foresty smell got stronger. Again I had that feeling that everything around me was almost alive, just lacking a drop of that something undefinable, something I knew to be inexorably out of reach.

If the gulf between life and almost-life was unbridgeable, unlife was universes away from either. Unlife or undeath, take your pick. They're both and neither, an unsatisfactory _via media_ , a dusty interstice in the vast edifice of multidimensional life, where I and those like me float endlessly, meaninglessly…

"Oh no, no, no. You _don't_ ," I said aloud. "You do not pull this bullshit on me. I ain't having it, you hear me?" I'll admit, they had me going there for a minute. But could anyone really think I'd believe it was me climbing along thinking deep thoughts about the Meaninglessness of All Existence, Especially Mine?

I did try serious reading, once. There was a recent time – as I'm sure you recall - when I was trying to woo Buffy by impersonating the kind of man I thought she might like. This briefly included a recollection of Angel reading – or at least staring at – improving literature, which spurred me to break into the library one night and escape with an armful of likely-looking titles. I swear I tried; but the first one I picked up kept talking about _anomie_ , and I kept reading it as 'anemia,' and that made me really hungry, and when I came back from the butcher I realized I'd lost my place. So I don't think it was a very improving experience, unless it was one of those things where the seeds of change are sown only to flourish many years hence. Like when a spider lays eggs in your ear but you don't realize until they start hatching in a few months. Maybe there's still hope for me!

I told the Powers where they got off, trying to manipulate me with psychology and suggestion and what not. I know what belongs in my head and what doesn't. Though it comes to me now that the smarter move might've been letting them think they were winning. As it was, by the time I stopped shouting at them, they were already trying another tack. Or maybe they'd had my number all along and started with a warmup, to lull me into thinking I had a chance.

First I thought I heard Angelus, with that low humorless laugh of his; then a higher voice chimed in, which I'd have sworn was Cecily (woman I once knew – long story). Voices I've known, voices I've forgotten. What they all had in common was the nastiness. Myself, I won't deny I know how to get the verbal knife in and twist – it's all you have, sometimes. But this was an entire different level.

"Well, well, William." This was Charles, last seen with a railway spike sticking out of his remaining eye socket. "Still trying to crawl up some chit's skirt. Tell me, have you presented her with any of your charming verses yet? Has she brushed you off, like the piece of unspeakable crud you are?"

I clenched my jaw and kept on. Paths of the dead, huh. Just fucking full of fucking dead people.

Then Angelus piped up.

"So you went and threw everything away, did you, boy? My, how we've changed. And here I was really thinking you meant it about sticking with Drusilla. All that outraged yelping about my 'cruelty' to her. It really got to you, didn't it, how I could do anything at all to her and she'd love me best. I could do anything I like to Buffy too, you know, and she'd come running right back to me, eating out of my hand. Well, she wouldn't, because she's dead, isn't she, and thanks to whom would that be? That's right, Willy-boy, you've gone and bagged yourself that third Slayer finally. Of course, you only managed it through sheer incompetence, but cheer up! It's the result that counts! Though I wouldn't count on her being too happy to see you now. She got everything you had to give her, not that it was much. She went to her death with your severed balls in her dainty little pocket."

"She was wearing jeans, you plonker." I couldn't help myself. "What dainty fucking pockets?"

He ignored me. "And for what, Willy? For what? For a rag and a bone and a hank of hair," he recited.

"She'll spit in your face when she sees you," Cecily put in. "I know I would. I'm only sorry I didn't when I could."

And so it went, on and on. Voices I didn't even remember shrieked and wept and whispered at me, accusing me of murder.

"You never even thought of it as murder, did you? And you still don't." Angelus said in my ear. "What do you suppose _she'll_ think of that, hey? You climb and climb, but you're still beneath her. You will always be beneath her. The best part is, you will never really understand why."

The thing was, everything they said was true. Unlike that earlier nonsense, I'd thought all of this myself at some point. Yes, even that last thing. It's morals I'm lacking, not wits. You really think it never occurred to me that there things, crucial to Buffy's existence, that I have no hope of understanding, not in a way that would mean anything?

"Understand her?" Darla sounded amused. "Have you ever asked yourself, William, if she would understand you?"

"Of course he hasn't," Angelus said. "Not much of a philosopher, our William. Not much of anything, if you ask me. I put all that effort into teaching him what it really means to be a vampire, but does he learn?"

That brought back memories, that did. The sheer tedium of the interminable lectures before he'd let me have a meal, all the while dissecting it and doing what he probably thought was something artistic to its innards. The abstraction of the human body into its purest forms, blah blah blah, something about blood being the only true medium. Fuck me if I know for what. And when I'd manage to go off and have some fun for a change, he'd go on for hours bleating about how I lacked finer feelings.

Right about now, I'm questioning a lot of my ingrained assumptions, but if you're going to go around eating people, does doing it inartistic-like make it worse somehow? Did he think people would look at his blood-and-guts arrangements and go, Oooh, what an artist, what a pity we can't bung this stuff in a museum, he's like the Rembrandt of corpses? What they actually said once they finished vomiting was more along the lines of, What a sack of hammers, let's get the pitchforks sharpened. Talk about never learning.

When he figured the lectures weren't doing it, he thought of other ways to get at me, to make it clear that Drusilla was his and that I was less than him. Hate to admit it, but he always succeeded. If I'd been more like him, if I could sit there just thinking of ways to undermine him… actually, that happened once and all I did was betray him to Buffy and hit him with a crowbar.

By this time, I was having to stop every few minutes. I was beginning to heal, and the feeling was returning to my body, which is never pleasant when one's shredded carcass is clinging to a gigantic tree with spines all over. In the distance above my head, I began noticing a faint glow – the first trace of light I'd seen since the candles winked out. The voices were like more thorns, prickly and painful and incredibly irritating. At one point, I actually broke down and howled at them, "Shut up! SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

They laughed.

"I'm sure Miss Summers will be highly impressed by this display," Cecily snotted. "How very _crude_."

But I actually felt a tiny bit better after that. I'd reminded me of Dawn, in a stupid and juvenile kind of way. Up until then I think I'd forgotten the real world existed. It was just Buffy and the evil voices and the thorny tree, and Buffy was getting kind of fuzzy. I focused on the glow and pushed on.

The voices didn't like that one bit. They doubled down on the personal remarks and the slimy innuendo. Then they started in on Buffy.

"Say what you will, forbearance isn't one of our Buff's virtues, is it," Angelus said with an indulgent chuckle. "And you fucked up, didn't you, Willy. Oh boy, have you fucked up. She won't remember everything you did for her, everything you gave up. To her, that's just the way it's supposed to be. She will never understand, what it meant to you to send away Drusilla, to give up everything that made you who you were. One mistake, and that's it, boyo. You're lucky if she lets you unlive."

She had forgiven me, though. She let me in, again and again. After I tried to kill her, after that whole mess with the chaining up, after the robot. Did you know she invited me in the house again, that last night? She treated me like a person, even after all my attempts to act like one fell through. No need to come over all protective, Watcher. I didn't say she treated me like a person that she liked.

"Remember when you stopped that sword blade with your bare hands?" Darla, now. "Did she spare you a glance? An ounce of concern?"

Well, no, she hadn't. So what? So fucking what? What, I don't understand that she had other things to worry about?

"That is because she is a stone cold bitch. When it comes to you, anyway. Doesn't it make it worse, knowing she is capable of infinite love but will never give it to you? I can do anything I like to her, and she will forgive me, again and again, as she always has. Not you, though. It will never be you. She thinks you're worthless, you know that." Angelus again.

"William, you know you can ask for anything at the end of the path. Anything you want. Why waste it on bringing back an ungrateful little brat? You could have yourself back. The real you. I'll admit it, Spike. There is more to you than I thought at first. We could go back, the two of us. Death and glory and sod all else, you said. We can have all of it, together. Isn't that what you've always wanted?"

"Fuck off, Angelus," I muttered. All this was beginning to hit uncomfortably close to home. This last bit, now: Drusilla offered me the same thing that time she showed up. Whatever else I screwed up that night, I made my choice, and I'd thought that would close the door on that particular dilemma. I didn't have to think anymore about whether I was going to help Buffy. I didn't have to weigh risks. Because choosing her meant accepting that, from then on, I was going to lay everything on the line. Now I was having to think about it again, and I was finding it exhausting.

I scraped some of the dirt off myself and stuffed it into my ears, but it didn't help much. They just got closer and louder. For a while, I sang at the top of my lungs, and that drowned them out a little, until my throat gave out. The closer I got to the white glow, the louder and nastier they got. They even got Buffy's voice in there.

"You're a thing," she said, "a dead evil _thing_. There is nothing good or clean in you."

It was a while before I could make myself go on again.

"It makes me sick to look at him, it really does," Angelus said. "He actually thinks it isn't going to be like this when he brings her back. She's going to, what, swoon into his manly embrace and thank him for being such a hero?"

"I _know_ ," Darla replied. "He never learns. He bites the hand that feeds him and then he's so surprised when he's punched in the face. Spike, that cry for help thing you do? Everyone can tell. And no one cares. Oh my God, are you _crying_?"

"Really, William," Cecily went, in that falsely pitying tone of hers. "You should be more discreet about those feelings of yours. By the way, I know you are very attached to that Dawn Summers, but you must realize that she cares very little for you. I really hate to tell you this, but she laughs at you behind your back."

For some reason, this was the final straw. I wanted to rip someone's head off, anyone's. I actually started to turn around, when I heard the first voice in this godforsaken place that was not a rotten piece of shit. It was hardly more than a breath, but I'd know Dawn's voice anywhere.

"They are big fat liars, Spike," she said. "Everything they say is lies, and you know it. You can't listen to them."

"Not so simple, Bit," I muttered. "Well, not the part about you – I know you wouldn't. But the other parts… You know what they say, it hurts because it's true."

"No. Not the way they say it. Stop being stupid, Spike. I know you're better than this, and so is Buffy. It's on you to make sure this never becomes true." And, just like that, she was gone and I was alone with the rest of them again.

It did make me feel better, a little, even though I knew it was not quite that simple. I couldn't kid myself – I knew Buffy had it in her to say every single one of these things. She hadn't, though. Not like that. Not yet. And I could be angry as hell at Buffy and still want to save her. I can contradict myself if I want to, I told myself. This is not a goddam logic course or some kind of maths bollocks where I have to show my work. I will save Buffy this time and sod everything else.


	5. Chapter 5

When I could focus again, I saw that I was almost to the part with the white glow. This close, I could see that what I'd taken for a big cloud of light was actually a cluster of thousands of small shining spheres.

"Well, Willy-boy, small chance of you getting your balls back, but now you've a crack at her soul. If you can find it in all that mess." All the other voices had kited off, leaving me with just Angelus. Joy.

I looked at the spheres again; they seemed identical. "I have to get Buffy's soul out of there?"

"If you want the bitch alive again. I wouldn't if I were you, but I suppose it's useless trying to understand why an idiot like you does anything."

And finally, blessed silence.

The souls didn't seem to be tethered to the tree in any way. As far as I could see, they were just bobbing around, making tiny chiming sounds when they bumped into each other. Sea of Tranquility, I thought. Only that was on the moon, wasn't it? Or was it Mars? This place felt further away than that, anyhow.

I tried sniffing for Buffy's scent, but I suppose souls don't actually smell. In any case, I couldn't. I strained my eyes, trying to see even the smallest difference – no, all the same. I crawled out onto the branch they were clustered around, which turned out to be covered in tiny thorns. "Buggering sodding, arsing _fuck_ ," I snarled, and instantly felt ashamed in front of that holy soul-glow; then I felt ashamed of feeling ashamed, which made me curse some more, just to show that a bad vampire like me was not going to be cowed into proper language by a bunch of day-glo eggs. Then I felt cheap for having thought that way about the souls.

Wasn't Dawn's blood in my hand supposed to help me find Buffy? I surveyed what remained of my palm; lord only knows if I even had any of my own left in there. Still, I dropped my fangs and slashed at where I thought the knife-scar lay.

At first, I thought I was seeing things. The blood that seeped out of the crack in my hand had a greenish tinge to it, a deep green sparkle, like a concentrated drop of life itself. Slowly, it turned into a fine mist floating above my hand. Again, I felt that smell of fresh new life, almost stirring, almost beginning to grow underground.

The mist slowly rose and began drifting towards the cluster of souls. I did my best to climb fast enough to keep it in my sight, but I couldn't keep up. I heaved myself over the next thick branch just in time to see the mist float over the center of the clutch and sink into one of the eggs.

I climbed faster, but the green glow around the egg dissipated a lot quicker than I could get to it, and I was left with just the smell to follow. When I finally got to the soul-nest, I had to do some very careful poking around. Up close, the souls were tiny and very fragile-looking, more like soap bubbles than eggs. I picked up one or two that I decided didn't smell quite right before I found the one I was fairly sure belonged to Buffy.

Can't really say how I knew; it wasn't that the soul smelled of her, specifically. I mean, it wasn't like sniffing a sweater or something and going, oh yeah, that's Buffy's, sure. More like… say, I was following her through a forest and lost track and then I saw something carved into one of the tree trunks. A cross, let's say. And I'd remember that a long time ago, I maybe made some comment about a cross necklace she had, and she told me something about it, like, her granny gave it to her or she shoplifted it at the five-and-ten when she was thirteen. (Is that still a thing? The five-and-ten?) So I'd figure it was something we both remembered talking about. And I'd know Buffy had left it there for me to follow. That's what this felt like: intentional. Like somewhere in there, Buffy, or some part of her, was telling me, 'I'm here.'

I do wonder about those other souls in that nest. There must have been thousands in there, hundreds of thousands maybe. Is this really a thing that happens a lot, people just falling into dimensional portals? One second, and they're just lost forever? In any case, I made myself be careful putting them back, even though that's not something I am a lot. Careful with people I don't know.

Once I had Buffy's soul…egg…thing… once I had it, I thought I'd just climb back down. No such luck. The thorns has crept up behind me and formed an impenetrable thicket. I looked up, at where the trunk and branches above me got lost in the darkness. Still thorny, but normal thorny. Climbable. What on earth I was going to do when I got to the top, I had no clue, but mine not to wonder why, mine but to do & die & so on & so forth.

Onward and upward I kept hauling myself, stretching to grab the next giant thorn. I swear those things were getting further and further apart. Or maybe it was me shrinking; what with the darkness and the miles of tunneling to wind up where I started and all the rest of it, I couldn't even tell anymore. Maybe this whole place was like, inside a cell in a bacterium or something. I firmly told myself to stop thinking – it really wasn't helping.

The soul was a problem. It felt fragile, like the slightest pressure would burst the membrane keeping it together and send it sloshing all over the shop. I needed both hands to climb, and I didn't have any pockets, being still basically dressed in a couple truckloads of clay. Finally, I put it in my mouth and made myself remember not to put any pressure on it. Still almost dropped it a few times, not to mention my jaw was killing me.

I can't describe that climb. It was dark and painful, but in a really boring way. I almost would've welcomed the nasty voices again. Everything was silent – the kind of quiet when you're not sure if you've not just gone deaf. Couldn't even talk to myself, or hum, or anything. At one point all my thoughts and yearnings were distilled into the pure desire to just close my fucking mouth. This is the part where you say you've often felt the same, yeah? Ha bloody ha.

Angelus would've said the same, I expect. Always on at me about something or other. Either I lacked finer feelings, or I had too many emotions. Funny thing, I don't think he ever realized how much he contradicted himself. He would give me these speeches about how love makes us weak, and by 'us' he never meant himself, just lesser, stupider people. Him and Darla would sit there all sniggering and superior about how little they cared for eachother. Then he would drag us all to the theater or the ballet and, my hand to God, he would sit there crying his eyes out. It's like he can't let himself experience anything unless it's at a remove. You'd think it's because of the soul, but he was like this all along. And it's not that he doesn't want to, because I do think he does. He just can't. I'd feel sorry for him if I didn't hate him so much.

After about a billion years passed, I noticed the thorns felt a bit slippery, while the slight slope of the tree trunk gave way to a vertical surface. (How I noticed is by almost falling right off the sodding thing.) The woodsy organic smell was fading too, replaced by more familiar city smells. Cement, metal, slight whiff of eau de dump. I caught hold of the next thorn, brought my foot up to kick myself up off the wall and trod on a whole heap of nothing. Empty air. Almost dislocated my shoulder trying to keep from flying right off into the void. I managed to pull myself up and hung on to that thorn, shaking like a blancmange. Not being able to curse was a real handicap.

When I finally marshaled my scattered wits, some cautious patting around revealed that the thorns were now more in the nature of metal ladder rungs, the round kind, all worn smooth and slippery and seemingly held together with spit. And did I mention, hanging in the middle of sodding nowhere?

In the middle of me doing my best trapeze artist impression, a wind started up, which would've been a relief earlier but now was a bleeding nuisance. Of course, the ladder started blowing about like a bit of ribbon dangled near a fan. When finally I reached up and instead of another godforsaken rung I felt a flat surface, the jolt of relief was the last thing that propelled me up and over the edge onto what felt like a flat metal grid. I hooked my fingers into it and just laid there, not even noticing at first how much the thing was shaking and swaying in the gale.

Eventually I sat up and popped the soul out gingerly into the cupped palm of one hand while continuing to hold on to the metal with the other. That felt _much_ better. It was like that story about the man who complained he had no room in his house and they told him to bring all his cows and goats and things inside and then put one cow back out, and allegedly it was a huge relief to him. So even though I was still naked, covered in blood and dirt, and my hands were shredded so I could see actual bone, for about a minute regaining the ability to move my jaw and close my mouth made me feel better than I'd felt probably since they put the chip in.


	6. Chapter 6

I was on a narrow metal platform or bridge that seemed to stretch ahead for as far as I could see. Somewhere far below, there was a knot of churning diffuse light that made me queasy when I looked at it directly. The wind was going at it worse than ever, swinging the platform wildly from side to side with the horrible screeching noise of lots of metal parts grating against one another

I clutched Buffy's soul with one hand and the metal grid with the other and tried not to throw up. There was a tremendous clanging noise behind me; I turned my head as much as I could just in time to see the ladder I'd climbed be torn loose and plummet downward. I watched it hit the swirling light and wink out in an instant. The swirling in the light became briefly more agitated, spitting out baby lightning bolts that soon fizzled in the surrounding dark. A faint prickly scent of ozone drifted up.

The queasy feeling in my stomach deepened and spread. I knew this place, or what it stood for. I knew it as well as I knew the daily acrid taste of tears and bile rising into my throat and flooding my sinuses as I woke up and remembered again.

Silver and gold, that was what was supposed to get me past this one. Had I ever given any? Well, sure, to Drusilla, but did it count if it was from, er, victims? I thought not. The point of the song was, it's charity that keeps you safe in this place, and I've never been the charitable sort. Not on purpose. I suppose if I was drunk or in a good mood I may have flung a coin or two at a beggar and maybe even not eaten him afterwards. Hey, not eating someone I could've – would that… nah, pretty sure not.

As usual, I'd leapt in with both feet before looking or thinking about anything except the possibility of getting Buffy back. If I'd stopped and taken a minute to rub two brain cells together, I would've realized I'm not the man for this. Why didn't we call Angel again? He's as dead as me, and what with his whole helping the homeless or the hopeless or whatever, a far sight more charitable. Though probably not with silver and gold, miserly old sod. Tibet, right.

Well, here I was, and despite my glaring lack of qualifications, was just going to have to do my best. My jaw still felt like a serious case of mumps, so I kept holding on to the floor with just one hand and began crawling forward. I didn't risk getting up, what with the metal beneath me swaying and dipping like a carnival ride.

Next time I looked up, I thought I saw someone walking in the distance ahead of me. Couldn't see who it was, but it looked like a woman, with long hair that swirled around in the gale. An unreasoning conviction came over me that it was Buffy, and all I had to do was catch up to her before she was lost again. I crawled on, as fast as I could.

For a long time, it seemed like I wasn't getting an inch closer no matter how I hurried. I almost fell off a couple of time, on account of trying to see her better and not paying attention to where I was putting my hands. The next time I looked up, she was standing right there, looking into my face.

"Dru," I said weakly, sitting down and trying to scoot backward, inconspicuous-like. "What are you doing here?"

"The silver apples of the moon," she crooned. "The golden apples of the sun." Her eyes were sad and she smelled of that mood that came over her sometimes – rarely- on a moonlit night in early spring. A kind of restless grief, a mourning for something long forgotten. Of all the apparitions so far, she felt the most present.

"Are you really here, Dru?" I tried again.

"Oh, Spike," she said. "What have we given, my sweet? Blood shaking my heart… He found it in a quaint little shopgirl, but she's lost now. Do you remember where the lost girls go?"

No one could say I haven't given Dru anything. Beautiful dresses with beautiful girls in them. Dammit, not helping. The best years of my unlife, did that count?

"You've given and given, but it isn't the giving that's hard for you," Dru went on, swaying with the bridge's motion. "It's the giving _up_ that tears the heart right out of you, like beautiful fireworks. Burning, burning all up. You have to let go now, William. Before you burn and fall, like black paper rain on this earth where nothing grows." She bent down and touched the metal grid at her feet, then looked back up at me, laughing, her hair streaming around her face. For a fraction of a second I saw her clearly; then, she was gone.

The metal grate was glowing where she had touched it. I sat there, staring dumbly, until I felt a burst of heat on my hand where I was gripping the grid. Time to get going again.

About this time, I noticed the sides of the bridge getting closer together; soon enough I was having trouble keeping both knees on it. Plus, I don't know if the wind was getting stronger or the narrow bridge was lighter and easier to fling around, but it was whipping around like crazy. Let go, Drusilla had told me, but she was always an unreliable narrator. Even if it was really her and not another mindfuck. Besides, letting go was not what I did. Solving puzzles was not what I did either and now didn't seem like a good time to start. I held on.

By the time I actually started sizzling – smoke and grill marks and all – the bridge was more in the nature of a thick metal rope strung over a whole lot of nothing. Instead of crawling, I was hauling myself along, hand over hand. Below me, eddies of light crawled and swirled lazily. Waiting.

In spite of myself, I must have stared into the vortex for a mite too long. A moment of dizziness and I was over, just barely managing to catch the red hot metal line with my hands. Almost let go again, too, when I felt the burn. Managed not to and just hung there like a side of meat before I tried to move again. The disgusting sound my hand made peeling off the metal is the last thing I remember clearly from that point on, for quite a bit.

I think I sort of went out of my head for a while. Sometimes I couldn't feel anything at all, and others all I felt was my hands, engulfed in flames. Looking down didn't make me dizzy anymore. I thought I saw fields of snow in the sunlight, or a hill of white blossoms, or a shining lake. I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the dazzle, tears running down my face. For some time I felt a presence beside me. Not Drusilla, but not human either. "The Slayer forges strength from pain," she said, conversationally. Or maybe those were just words I heard, in my head. Didn't know what to do with them, anyway. Ducky for the Slayer, I didn't reply, remembering in time that I was carrying Buffy's soul in my mouth again, like a sodding fangy pelican or something.

After that came something like a lucid dream. In what felt like a hallucination, I was still heaving myself forward, inch by inch, with my hands burning up and my shoulders like to come out of their sockets. In the real world, I was standing in the kitchen on Revello Drive, watching Joyce lift a cake out of the oven.

"I'll let it cool a bit and then I'll frost it," she said. "Then it will be ready for you to bring over. Don't leave it too late – the woods are dangerous this time of year."

But I was already through the woods, making good time, and just starting at the edge of the desert. Overcome by a moment of curiosity, I lifted the cover of the cake dish. It was gold-and-silver cake, just as I'd thought.

"Oh, no soul cakes today?" It was the earlier presence, back again and prickling with fierceness.

"Soul cakes would've been easier to travel with," I agreed, "none of this messy frosting. But today this is all I've got."

She grumped silently alongside of me – I could tell she was used to never getting her way, and it hadn't made her humble or resigned at all. Ordinarily, this would have made me like her immediately, but there was something about her… Something about being next to her that felt _wrong_ , like mixing bleach and ammonia or wearing lime green and fuchsia. I felt the skin on the back of neck tighten and my teeth clench.

"If you wanted soul cakes, you should have waited till All Hallows Eve," I said. "No one bakes them now."

"Fat lot of use you are," she harrumphed. " _Vampire_. Don't think I wouldn't end you in a _heartbeat_ if I didn't have to let you deliver the cake."

"Hey, I could kill you too, you know. Vampire, here, like you said. Just, I don't have time now."

We were climbing up a steep mountainside now and it was harder to keep the cake from slipping around and mashing the frosting. I tamped down my temper as hard as I could and glared silently. I still couldn't see her walking next to me but I was pretty sure she was doing the same.

Finally, I was setting the cake down on a worn porch swing and lifting my hand to knock on the warped boards of the door.

"Aren't you going to wear your coat for this, Big Bad?" growled the voice behind me.

That didn't quite sound right. "But I am the one delivering the cake," I said.

"Will you STOP harping on that fucking cake already!"

"Well, _excuse_ me. Joyce gave me the bloody cake to deliver, didn't she, so I am bloody well going to bloody deliver it. Do you think I need a coat to deliver cake?"

"As usual, William, you are missing the point. You need to get it through your thick skull that the stupid cake is not what is important here. It's not even the right kind of cake, for crying out loud! If you have two brain cells left to rub together, do please try and think through what you are trying to accomplish here."

"I am trying to deliver cake," I said. I don't believe in making things more complicated than they should be.

I heard her draw an irritated breath to shout at me some more, when we both froze. From deep inside the small house, we heard a dull tapping sound. It was a death clock and a tell-tale heart and the footsteps of Something slowly approaching the door.

"See what you did, William?" she breathed, suddenly sounding a lot like Dru. "You've gone and woken her up." I felt her grip my arm, hard, and I woke up.

Below me, the fields of snow looked cool and billowy and soft. I could let myself drop, sink deep into the snow and sleep, sleep and forget… Something yanked on my arm, and I felt her there, almost pulling me down.

"Don't you dare drop me," she hissed.

I can't tell you how badly I wanted to. If walking next to her irritated every fiber of my being, touching her made me want to crawl out of my skin. I think the only thing that kept me hanging on to her was having no idea why I felt like that. I told you, in my head she seemed like someone I would like.

The bridge was now a red hot filament cutting into my palms. At least Whoever She Was had the sense eventually to stop hanging off my arm and attached herself to my waist instead. I'm not sure I was actually moving at all when the snow crumbled back into blackness and everything around us went dark.


	7. Chapter 7

_If ever thou gav'st meat or drink,  
Every nighte and alle,  
The fire sall never make thee shrink;  
And Christe receive thy saule._

 _If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,  
Every nighte and alle,  
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;  
And Christe receive thy saule._

When I opened my eyes, I could've howled. As far as I could see, I was right back in the same circle of thorns I'd started from, now barely visible in the glow from Buffy's soul. Which I had miraculously failed to drop or squish, so there was that. It was heavier now. I was also holding a limp length of metallic-looking thread that trailed into an opening in the ground right at my feet. There were rough steps shaped from the clay, leading down.

Is it possible for a vampire to develop claustrophobia? Honestly, now that I'm out of there, I've half a mind to find myself something on the roof of a skyscraper. Had enough of the underground to last me several unlifetimes.

Down I went, with the thread in one hand and the soul-globe in the other. It was a long descent, but restful compared to what had gone before. Just… dark and cramped and smelling like… I don't know, this awful sterilized sort of smell that put me in mind of a hospital morgue. A smell that was dead through and through, with everything organic scrubbed out of existence.

Even the soul seemed to flicker and dim a little as we descended, in a way I found distinctly alarming.

At the bottom of the stairs, I found myself in a small round earthen chamber. A round hole was scooped out of the wall and filled with dully glowing embers. After so much time in the darkness, even this much was enough to make my eyes hurt and water. The smell, though, was a relief: ashes and fire and earth.

"Hello?" I called. "Anyone?" The soul had got so heavy during the time it took me to go down the stairs that I could barely hold it up. Was too afraid to set it down on the floor.

"Is that you again, William?" Let me say this for Cecily, no one else could pack such a wealth of refined disgust into a few simple, harmless syllables. (Alright, alright, so I had a thing for Cecily way back when. Never came to anything. God, you Watchers are a nosy lot.)

Wearily, I turned around.

"They said I had to show you these and let you pick one," she said, shoving a tray under my nose. On it were three miniature boxes, beautifully guilded and decorated. Only my nose told me they were actually, waddyoucallem, you know, those tiny cakey things waiters pass around at fancy dos.

"Hurry up, William," Cecily said. "I _don't_ have all day for your nonsense."

"Pick one of those?" I said stupidly. Cecily rolled her eyes. Three little box-shaped cakey things, alright. One was covered in dainty gold curlicues. Another had tiny silver waves painted on. The third was plain and gray. Oh, this was beginning to look familiar.

"Petits fours!" I said.

"What?"

"You know, these cake things. Couldn't remember what they're called."

" _Focus_ , William. You want your… Buffy?... back, don't you. I see you have the soul and the spirit, but what good is that if you don't have a body? Where are you going to put them? I don't think you are taking this very seriously."

I went back to considering the cakey boxes. Anyone who's ever read a fairytale will know that gold and silver are not the way to go here, never mind any pretty fancies about her hair in the moonlight and so on. I reached out for the leaden petit fours, then pulled my hand back. This didn't seem right. First of all, nothing here smelled like Buffy – there was just stale cake and musty fondant. Also, why would Buffy's body be in a cake box? A person isn't a cake.

"Ah, bugger this for a game of soldiers," I said, turning around and plunging my hand into the smoldering embers in the wall. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, and this fire was where you got both. Made more sense than cake, anyhow.

The fire hurt like hell but, to my relief, wasn't actually burning me up. I pulled up a big handful of hot ash mixed with clay and knew I'd got it right as soon as I smelled that by-now familiar scent of life coming off it in waves.

"Think you've got it all figured out now?" In the moment, I'd forgotten about Cecily, still standing there with her tray. "Lucky guess. And if you ask me, I don't think the Powers are playing fair at all. You should have been dust for a long time before not."

"Why aren't I, then?"

She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Apparently, you once passed me a bread roll at dinner, even though there was a footman _right there_ , but you never had any manners to speak of. Ugh, they are really stretching it here. I suppose they must want the Slayer back for some reason. A word of advice, William? Don't expect to make it out of here." With that, she took herself back off into thin air. Don't know what I ever saw in her.

I pressed the clay all around the soul-globe. It sort of sank in, absorbing some of the glow. I really couldn't hold it anymore, so for lack of better options, I sat down on the floor next to it and covered it with my hands.

Then I heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind me, slow heavy thumps that made the walls ripple and clumps of warm dirt rain from the ceiling. The hair on the back of my neck stood up – at least it felt like it did. Whatever was coming down was old and strong. I'd never felt anything like it. Compared to this, Glory was like a fledge fresh out of the grave.

"Vampire," it spoke. I turned. Something like a man stood at the foot of the stairs, but when I tried to look at its face, the features were blurred. Not deformed, I don't mean. Just difficult to see. And when I tried to look harder, I got a sort of double vision of a small man standing two feet away from me and of someone immeasurably large at the other end of the universe. Or, like the bloke in front of me was having to contain all that largeness in a human frame, and the condensed mass was making him into a person-shaped black hole. Made me dizzy.

It dawned on me he was waiting for a response.

"Er, what?" I said. "What, me?"

"What are you doing here with that soul?" he asked.

"Oh, I, uh, that's not mine. Um, this is Buffy," I said weakly, waving a hand at the glowing clay lump. "Buffy's soul. And some other stuff I don't understand. Look, I found it glopped all over your paths and things, and I tidied it up for you, right. No. I mean, I've walked the paths of the dead and now I get what I came for, right? "

"You have walked the paths of the dead, and you come to ask a favor of me, the Master of this place," he said.

"Yeah. I have and I do."

"Ask, then, vampire."

I tried to pull myself together and actually think this through for once. Ask, they say. Go on, make a wish! Like they all just can't wait to grant you your heart's desire, but if you aren't careful, there you are, with a string of sausages stuck to your nose or your soul sold to Satan, and you all fresh out of wishes. Buffy would _kill_ me if I brought her back to life with a string of sausages stuck to her nose. You know the Powers – all varieties of 'em, thrones, dominations, and whatnot - all ambiguities to be interpreted in the worst possible light, all buggerings-up to be carried out to their fullest extent. This was the kind of thing that wanted careful thought, ideally by someone with a lot of experience in careful thinking. Too bad they weren't there, whoever they are.

"Alright," I said. "What I want is, I want Buffy to be alive again, and when I say alive, I mean her actual soul in her actual body the way they both were before she died. On May 15, 2000. Er. She should be alive… right, I said that. No diseases, no bricks falling on her head right after… oh, and she should be alive now. In this time, I mean. And, um, on Earth. I mean, on the planet Earth and also on top of its surface. In Sunnydale." What else was I missing? "In a safe place, with no enemies near her. In her house! With a normal human lifespan! No clever modifications and whatnots, please! And when I say Buffy, we know I mean Buffy Summers, the Slayer, right?"

Wouldn't put it past them to go fishing through the space-time continuum for any other unfortunate soul named Buffy so they could dump her in Sunnydale with a big old "You're _welcome_ , Spike!"

"This is your request then, vampire? To revive the Slayer as she was before her death?"

"With her soul. I did say the soul, didn't I? This here soul I'm holding right now, oh and if I missed any bits do please put those in too. In the right order, if the order matters…"

"Vampire. You are becoming incoherent. Cease. We will return your Slayer as you wish."

"No tricks?"

He didn't reply. The shadows around him shifted and stirred, and a blast of hot wind shook the cave. The clay on the walls shimmered and began to melt. The Master, with what looked like a lot of effort, lifted his hand and stretched it out to towards the clay-soul-Buffy thing I was clutching.

"How very odd," he said, his inflectionless voice sounding almost wistful. "A being of darkness and death, you have come here, where everything comes to die. From decaying atoms to entire worlds, here is where they collapse and decay. You could not have come here if this were not your essence." I felt it as he spoke. Felt the deadness inside me, my heart, brain, innards all empty and dry, powered by a sterile cycle of death and corruption, of turning something into nothing.

He continued.

"Yet you come here to bring a light back into the world. In the world of the living, you have given protection, sustenance, and wealth. You would not be standing here otherwise. To make yourself a fit messenger, you have given your skin for the thorns to wear, your blood for the earth to drink, your dreams to feed the fire. Why?"

"I was being selfish," I admitted, inwardly cursing myself for this entirely inappropriate candor. On the other hand, something inside urgently told me that speaking anything but the exact and complete truth would be a terrible idea right then. "And I'm pretty sure I never gave anyone any wealth." Passing that bread roll to Cecily couldn't actually count, could it?

"You walk in other worlds," he said. "Your wealth lies in the spirit and imagination." Shivers ran down my spine – Dru said almost these exact same words to me, first time we met. (Thought I was being understood at last, but, woe and alas, turned out I was just being seen through.)

"A thing is not false just because someone didn't mean it the way you wanted it to mean." It is impossible to tell if he is trying to be kind, in his way. "You would not be standing here if you had nothing to give." The shadows moved again, and he was leaning forward. It made me dizzy, because I still couldn't tell if he was standing in front of me or galaxies away.

"There is something in you, vampire…Oh, not a soul, not that. Just something that should not be. Have you noticed how still your body is? No blood, no breath, cells frozen, forever unchanging. And yet in this wasteland, I see something bright and noisy and constantly moving. It is but a tiny thing, a dropped match in the corner of a vast desolate hall. You forgot to stamp it out, and now you cannot want to. What do you want to do with it, vampire? Are you furtively feeding it, day by day, letting it grow? Do you already hear the roaring of the flames when it blazes up, sending up the whole building in a pillar of fire? You know you should be terrified, but you find it beautiful and your joy in it is so much stronger than your terror… "

"Listen, I bloody well didn't go through all that just so I could listen to a lot of fuckwitted rambling. Get enough of that at home, don't I? Now give me what I sodding came here for and I'll just be on my way, then." I can't help getting irritated when I am afraid, and this bloke was getting creepier every second. Besides, my feelings are none of his business. Or yours, for that matter.

"Very well. I will grant your favor, rude little vampire. By tradition, I should keep you here, but you are noisy and disruptive. I will send you back."

"Make Buffy alive again," I interrupted. "Like I said before: no tricks, no monkey paws."

"She will live, as you said. You will not come here again. The way is closed."

He laid a dim hand over the Buffy-glow. It responded by flaring up in a vast sheet of blue-white light, blanking out the world.


	8. Chapter 8

You know the rest.

The others will have told you how they waited inside the crypt, not daring to speak or move, staring at the candle-lit circle until it seemed the only real thing and the rest of the world felt faded, fretted away, lost in time. They knew something had worked because I had disappeared. At daybreak, the candles suddenly went out and the world snapped back into place, like your ears popping on a plane, Dawn said (I wouldn't know). The magic was gone, leaving a dirty stone floor with a circle of half-melted candles and a bowl of dry weeds slowly crumbling into ash.

They have told you how sure they were that I'd failed and that the last hope of helping Buffy had gone. They straggled home, not bothering to pick up the spell detritus, and there she was. Buffy, waking up on the couch. "I'm here," she said, sweeping her hair out of her face. "I'm here. I'm all here."

Let me draw the curtain of discretion over the subsequent exclamations and tears and things, as well as over my own feelings at the time, which you are perfectly aware of and are none of your sodding business anyhow.

I must have arrived back together with Buffy; at any rate, when the cavalry drooped in, I heard them soon enough to hide on the basement stairs.

No, I haven't really spoken to Buffy since. I expect I'll get over it presently, but I'm feeling an awkwardness about this whole deal. It seemed like unequivocally the right thing to do when we started out, and I still don't see what else we could have done with what we knew. But now I am beginning to get that feeling, like I've forgotten or overlooked something. I expect it's nothing, but if you can see your way to doing some kind of magical checkup or whatnot, surreptitious-like… Just to be sure.

In any case, I have told you all I know about the how and why. Admittedly, that is not much. For one thing, I still have no idea how much stretching of metaphors was needed to come to the conclusion that I have fulfilled the requirements. I am as surprised as you are at finding myself still in existence; I'd kind of looked forward to making the heroic sacrifice. Would've been simpler.

For another, I can't be rid of the feeling that I've somehow been changed, and I don't know if it's the normal kind of change you get just by going through things, or if the blasted place did something to me. Don't ask me how – I can't quite put my finger on it. Only, now… remember when I went off the deep end that time with Buffy, and I was all, I can change, I can be good. And you folks were all, no, Spike, you're a serial killer in prison? See, then I thought I'd changed because I was doing things differently. I used to kill humans but I wasn't now. Specific, see? But, inside, I felt pretty much the same, except for who I was in love with. Now… there's not a part I can point at and say, here's the line between how it used to be and what it's now. It's not acting differently, and it's not feeling. It's something underneath all of that – 'just internal difference, where the meanings are.'

No, it is not my buggering soul. Don't you think I'd notice? You have a disgustingly one-track mind, you do.

Buggered if I know what, Watcher. Maybe you can figure it out while you're at it. I rather think I've had enough introspection for quite a while.

Oh, and I finished what you call your good Scotch. Needed it to refresh my memory.

Yours, etc.

"You got a letter already?" Buffy craned her neck in the direction of the crumpled stack of lined notebook paper tucked into a book on Giles's coffee table. The sheets were covered with dense, scribbled writing on both sides, with lots of crossed-out parts. "Didn't you only just get here?"

"Just some old research notes," Giles said. Spike's narrative was not something Buffy was ready to see now. He was not sure what to make of it, but on the whole was inclined to view the thing as mostly truthful, if only because constructing such an elaborate lie would be more work than Spike was likely to put in for no discernible reason.

"How are you feeling, Buffy? Do you…have any recollection of… when you were…?"

"I feel fine. I think? Kind of like if I was asleep a lot. You know, a bit groggy. Willow said something about me being lost somewhere? I don't think I remember that."

"I am – we all are – so glad to have you back. Truly." She seemed alright, if a little dazed, which was only natural considering the circumstances. No, he could not be sorry for whatever rashness had led to this. Although Spike, damn him, was probably right to fear consequences – no one knew better than Giles that magic gave you nothing for free. One could only hope that whatever repercussions there were would fall on Spike, not Buffy.

He surfaced from his thoughts to notice Buffy staring at him with a questioning expression.

"Sorry?" he said.

"I said, I think I am ready to patrol tonight."

"Are you sure? Some of us can continue to take patrols until you are feeling yourself again."

"No, I'm fine. By the way, have you seen Spike anywhere? You know, I assumed he left town but Dawn says he's been around a lot, actually."

"No, I haven't seen him today. I wouldn't worry about it; I'm sure he'll turn up when he wants to."

"Yeah, probably."

Giles stared at her retreating back for some moments before collecting himself and closing the door. He felt adrift again, as he had in the days leading up to the battle with Glory. Something ought to be done about Spike, but he was damned if he knew what. He'd known what had to be done about Dawn, but voicing it had only made things worse, reinforced Buffy's willingness to take that plunge. With Buffy back, Spike's obsession with her would flare up again and take unpredictable turns. Buffy should be spared having to deal with him. Yet something told him that, just as with Dawn, the right thing to do was not necessarily the best way. Giles found that he was not in the mood to eliminate Spike, not after he had brought Buffy back from an incomprehensible fate. "There's always time to stake him," he told himself, resolving to shelve the issue for now. The more pressing problem was ascertaining whether Buffy had indeed, been somehow affected. For the umpteenth time, Giles reached for Spike's notes. 'Some kind of magical checkup,' indeed.

The night cemetery was cool and still under the full September moon. The vampires and demons were determinedly refusing to stir, except one, who was following her behind the surrounding shrubbery, no doubt under the impression that he was doing so stealthily. Tired of pretending it was working, Buffy stopped abruptly, spun, and shot her arm into the shadow of an unnaturally rustly bush, grabbing hold of a familiar coat collar.

"Oh, bugger," Spike said, stepping out into the moonlight. "Hello, Buffy."


End file.
